


I have faults enough

by haemodye



Series: The Importance of Dynamics [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Infidelity, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, One Shot, POV Tony Stark, Read the author note if that's a trigger for you, Sort Of, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Tony Stark Feels, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28244160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemodye/pseuds/haemodye
Summary: Tony's handling being soul bonded to an old-fashioned alpha who can't stand him about as well as you'd expect.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: The Importance of Dynamics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058945
Comments: 43
Kudos: 183
Collections: Captain America/Iron Man Bingo





	I have faults enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sticky one. I'm filling my "free" square on my bingo card with this really sad story about infidelity because that's where we are in this 'verse I guess. See spoilery warning below.
> 
> Other warnings: negative self thoughts, infidelity (see note), alcohol
> 
> [spoilers] Tony has some Bad Thoughts and sleeps with someone who is not Steve. This is not shown explicitly. He and Steve have not discussed their relationship at all, but in the world they inhabit this is squarely in the realm of infidelity. It's assumed that once you find your soulmate you Claim them and Bond with them and that's how it is forever. Steve doesn't know about this. Tony feels guilty. This will eventually be resolved in this series, but not in this one shot. [/spoilers]

“I should buy blockers, shouldn’t I?”

Tony blinks, slowly, and turns around.

It’s three in the morning. He’s spent all night working on a free consult for the MTA. Grand Central is an imperative part of New York’s infrastructure, but much of midtown’s tunnels had been damaged in the fight. The leviathans falling in the streets had weakened beams and steel tubes that had never been meant to take that much weight, let alone at terminal velocity. It was messy, expensive work to replace the metal structures the tunnels were made of, and even Manhattan Schist could only handle so much stress. He was nowhere close to being done. He just wanted a snack, and now here Steve was, bugging him about blockers of all things.

“Tony?”

Tony blinks, shaking the bleariness from his eyes. “Uh.” He rubs a hand over his face. He’d ask why Steve was awake at this hour, but the overwhelming musk of fight and fear pheromone says more than Steve ever would. “Your body, your choice.”

Steve crosses his arms, the furrow in his brow that he seems to perpetually wear around Tony deepening noticeably. Great. He’s gonna give Captain America premature wrinkles. “You’d be more comfortable around me, if I wore them,” he says, and Tony raises his eyebrows.

“What does that matter?” Tony asks, bewildered. He’s too tired for this.

“Because,” Steve says, a dangerous rumble in his voice. “You-“ He grits his teeth, frustrated. “You _know_ why.”

Ah, yes. Because Steve believes in soulmates, and he’s determined to martyr himself for Tony’s comfort out of misplaced obligation. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable in your own- Uh. Your own home,” Steve says. He’s stubborn as ever. Tony thinks that perhaps he ought to find it charming, but mostly it seems to get on his last nerve.

“Little late for that,” Tony mutters, and Steve properly scowls at that. “Sorry, ignore me. I’m tired. Um. I mean, do whatever you wanna do. You live here too, now, so. Y’know.” He waves a hand, awkward, to the kitchen they’ve all been sharing while the penthouse is still being repaired. “This isn’t even my kitchen. It’s your and Bruce’s kitchen. My kitchen is broken and crusted over with flecks of biohazardous Asgardian supervillain blood.”

Steve opens his mouth, perpetual frown still fixed on his face, then closes it again. He uncrosses his arms, clenches his fists at his side.

“Can I-…” He clears his throat, tries again. His voice is strained when he speaks. “Are you hungry? Do you need anything?”

 _I need to not be forcibly bonded to a man who can barely stand to be in a room with me,_ Tony thinks sardonically.

“Nope.” He holds up his coffee mug, gestures towards the coffee maker. “I’ve got it. You can go back to…whatever it is that you were doing.” He glances around Steve’s broad shoulders and into the living room, where the TV above the fireplace is set to TCM. John Wayne is riding a horse. At the very least, Steve is relatively predictable.

Steve opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it. His body relaxes, the tension streaming out of him. He looks a little smaller, this way.

“Okay,” he says. His gaze flickers briefly to Tony’s face, then away, as though he can’t even bear to look at him.

Tony watches Steve make his way back to the couch, the broad line of his back limned in the dim light reflected from the television. He goes about the motions of making his coffee, but he can’t seem to stop looking at Steve: a silhouette in the darkness, back stiff and straight and proud, even when he thinks no one is watching.

Tony wonders if holding your head up high ever gets tiring.

Tony’s only met three Sight Bonded pairs in his life.

The first was Tiberius Stone’s parents. They were everything the media said they would be: coiffed, beautiful, perfectly matched. A textbook alpha male/omega female couple, they’d passed their perfect genes on to their son. Ty was an almost unbelievably conventionally attractive alpha: gleaming, wavy blond hair and blue eyes. Broad shoulders. A crooked grin. He’d had Tony wrapped around his finger from day one, and Tony had been utterly helpless to him. He’d shown Obeisance to Ty as easy as breathing, and Ty had abused it. Then Ty cheated on him, and the relationship had disintegrated in a terrifying flashbang of slammed doors and the kinds of terrible things that could not be unsaid.

It was first great betrayal of Tony’s life; not because no one had ever betrayed him before, because of course they had. Tony had learned from a young age who to trust and who was just looking for money and five minutes in the spotlight. But after a while, the shine wears off. Inevitably, Tony does something wrong. He forgets a date, or calls too late, or buys too extravagant of a gift. He wants to spend every free minute with his partner, which is overwhelming, but he doesn’t have much free time, which is neglectful. If anything, Tony shouldn’t be surprised that his so-called “soulmate” can’t stand to be around him. People don’t like the broken, greedy creature they find under the sheen of fame and wealth that Tony wields as both sword and shield to get him through the grating gauntlet of high society life, but it’s all Tony knows how to be. It’s all he can do. Steve was horribly, bone-chillingly right when he said it on the helicarrier. This damaged creature is all that’s left. It’s all he is. He doesn’t have anything else to give.

It seems trite to think it now, but Ty had been different. Ty had known intimately what it was like to suck on a silver spoon all your life and still feel like everything was spinning out of your control, like nothing you did mattered to anyone. Ty had made him believe that he was going to be Tony’s forever. Even on the days when Ty had been a shithead and it was clear that the relationship was doomed to fail, Tony had imagined a future that vaguely resembled what Barton and Romanov have; friends, even after the amicable break up, because their stories are so closely aligned it’s impossible to imagine ever meeting someone else whose broken edges might match up. He’d imagined that Ty would be someone he could always rely on. Tony had been foolish, then: young, and easily swayed by Ty’s perfectly coiffed aesthetic and porcelain smile. In retrospect, Tony had been lucky. He doesn’t think Ty would have stayed loyal even if Tony had Bonded with him, and the last thing in the world he wanted to do was follow in the steps of Maria Stark, bless her soul. Turing forbid Tony had thrown his whole life away like that for a noxious young love.

The second Sight Bond pair Tony met were Rhodey’s grandparents, and that was the one, if anything, that might have made him believe that maybe true love was possible. They’d been together fifty seven years, and they stayed that way until they died within days of each other. But Tony had almost never seen them apart, and the idea of needing someone that much terrifies him. Tony is uncompromisingly free. It is the part of himself that he loves most, and that he clings to with force. Tony is his own man. He does what he wants, creates things beyond most people’s wildest dreams, and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of him. The idea of being inextricably tied to someone in such a visceral way for the rest of his life is the most terrifying thing that Tony has ever come up against—more than captivity, or the dark expanse of enemy-laden space, or cardiac arrest. Even the love that shone in their eyes when they looked at each other wasn’t enough to circumvent the knowledge that their bond was antithetical to the way that Tony prefers to live his life. Even now, with a Sight Bond of his own, he hasn’t shaken that fear. He’s self-aware enough to know that much of the way he reacts to Steve is a manifestation of it: the worry that Steve’s old-fashioned sensibilities might spell the end of everything about his life that Tony actually likes.

The third Sight Bond pair he’s met only recently, and he still doesn’t know what to make of them. Thor and Jane Foster are Sight Bonded, although both of them use the term ‘soulmate’ with the kind of free laughter that only new lovers can afford. Thor is a millennia old alien who’s never been Bonded before, and he was delighted to have finally found one of his matches. Apparently the Aesir often outlived their partners, but Thor had never even tried. He’d wanted to wait, reasoning that most Aesir found at least one of their soulmates in their long lives. He’d informed them that even Loki had a soulmate he’d outlived already: Angrboða, Mother of Monsters. Tony has no idea what to think about any of it, and so he tries to put it out of his mind. He’ll stick to the hard sciences and leave the xenobiology to Bruce.

Sight Bonds are rare, and hold a kind of mythical place in the gestalt. Even diehard anti-dynamic activists soften a little at the idea: someone who is perfect for you, in every single way, down to the unique cocktail of hormones in your blood. The only record of a Sight Bond going sour is the romance between Cleopatra and Marc Antony, and whether or not they were ‘soulmates’ is highly contested. No one knows if that was a fabrication to justify their political manoeuvrings or if it was real. Now, of course, there are blood tests, which is how Tony knows that the nascent bond that pulls at his chest and tells him to find Steve and cuddle up next to him and complete the bond isn’t just in his head. Bruce had confirmed it. To Steve, because of the serum’s inclination to accelerate any and all biological processes, it’s like they’re already bonded. Tony hadn’t even needed to bite him to stake his claim. To Steve, he and Tony are already tied together. All he’s waiting for is for Tony to give in.

“I can’t do this,” Tony whispers.

He’s sitting on the couch that Steve has claimed for his own, so much so that it smells like him. Cloves and oranges, like old-fashioned Christmas. Warm leather in the sun. Clean castile soap. It’s a lovely, traditional alpha scent, and the part of Tony that isn’t fully conquered by his rational mind wants nothing more than to slather himself in it. He wants Steve to scent mark him, taste him until their scents combine into something new.

He could do it. He could go back upstairs and tell Steve he wanted to complete the bond, and Steve would go with him. He’d do his duty. A small, slightly hysterical laugh overtakes Tony at the thought. Lie back and think of America.

But Steve doesn’t _want_ him. Not really. He can’t stop himself from being around Tony, so he hovers, awkward, around the periphery of any room they’re in together. His hands are always curled into fists. He’s trying so hard, but Tony knows that all he knows how to do is make Steve furious. And there’s nothing he can do about it. This is who he is, regardless of Steve’s old-fashioned ideas of what his mate ought to be. He’s not willing to change, to make himself smaller: more demure, more sweet, more accommodating. He’s stealth, for chrissakes. His dynamic is hidden on his state ID. He’s the epitome of everything Steve hates about the future.

He pulls out the little blood tester that he and Bruce retrofitted—left over from his palladium poisoning days—and pricks his finger, feeding a hefty drop of blood into its mouth. The results come back the same. He’s in a nascent bond, and his cortisol levels are rising. His body wants him to finish claiming his mate.

“What should I do with you, Captain Rogers?” he murmurs to himself.

DUM-E beeps and swivels a claw at him, almost sympathetic. It’s the only response the universe sees fit to give him.

* * *

Steve starts wearing blockers whenever they leave the tower, but otherwise he doesn’t bother with them. Tony doesn’t know what to make of that, but they don’t discuss it again. Instead, they work together on fixing up the city. Steve is called in often by the fire department when they need a bit of delicate heavy lifting: places where they crane isn’t quite nimble enough to pick something up without bringing the whole place down. He spends a whole week at The Frick, trying to recover paintings and statues from a wing that collapsed under the force of an explosion after one of the Chitauri’s flying scooters went rogue and crash-landed on one of New York City’s premier art institutions. Tony donated a few thousand bucks and then left him to it, too busy trying to make sure the 4, 5, and 6 were up and running ASAP. Between their work on the ground and the tower renovations, they don’t have much occasion to see each other. But every night, like clockwork, Steve slinks into Tony’s workshop with hair damp from a shower, and curls up in his usual spot on the sofa. Sometimes, always initiated by Tony, they make awkward conversation. Mostly they let the music play and don’t speak at all.

Tony much prefers spending time with Bruce. He’s been examining the Chitauri and trying to understand how their hive-minds link up with their command ships. He’s also spent a fair amount of time on video calls with Jane, talking about whatever it is physicists get excited about in the wake of an intergalactic invasion: Einstein-Rosen Bridges, and unstable wormholes, and lots of things that Tony doesn’t want to talk about because they make his chest feel tight and his head spin. On those days, he goes down to Pepper’s office and lets her drag him around to talk to whatever investor or board member or client most needs to see his face. The normalcy of it is soothing, and Pepper doesn’t ask once about Steve, because she’s still hurting from their unspoken, undiscussed, and entirely predictable breakup. They’re just friends and co-workers. Everything is normal. For once in his long, ridiculous life, Tony kind of appreciates normal. He never thought he’d see the day.

Mostly, Tony builds suits. A suit for everything, anything he can imagine. Suits for drilling, and suits for building, and suits for stealth and speed. He develops a remote interface that allows him to send JARVIS to help the Port Authority with damage to the Roosevelt Island Tramway while he’s 140 feet below ground, examining the structural damage to the tunnels that carry the 7 train with a collection of city engineers. Nanites, he thinks, could slip into the existing cracks and reform, bolster and weld the steel until it’s stable enough to work around. The issue is that to fix the steel tubes that make up the arteries of the city, they’ll have to break the surrounding brick and concrete and replace the whole damaged section. Tony’s not sure if the tunnels are structurally sound enough to handle that level of invasive repair. One wrong move and the whole thing could come down around them.

Tony takes a series of comprehensive x-rays and promises to review the data and send it over securely as soon as he can. When he climbs up out of Grand Central, the air is muggy and dead. It’s properly summer in New York now, and getting into the cool metal of the suit is extremely satisfying on his sticky skin. He rolls his shoulders inside the metal, arching into it a little.

“JARVIS,” he says, a suspicion building in his chest, “how are my hormone levels?”

“T minus 18 days, sir.”

Tony freezes. He sucks in a slow, shaking breath.

“And if I take suppressants?”

“No licenced medical professional will prescribe them in your current state. If your cortisol levels continue to rise at this rate, you’ll have Cushing syndrome by November 3rd,” JARVIS tells him. “At the risk of wasting my time, I’d like to recommend that you speak to Captain Rogers, or at the very least Doctor Banner. Your heart is already compromised; you’ll be at severe risk for a heart attack within a month.”

Tony sighs. He kicks off from the pavement and rises into the sky, higher, higher. He looks down at Manhattan below him and tries not to remember the glow of the portal, the endless gleaming dark of space.

“Guess I better enjoy my last month of freedom.”

Tony’s never claimed to be mature, so he’s unashamed to wake up the next morning in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental, nursing the mother of all hangovers. Evidence from last night’s bender is strewn about the room. Bottles of Salon blanc de blanc and Hibiki litter the tabletops, and the lovely ladies he’d brought back to the suite are still in bed with him, one curled up under his arm and the other with her head resting against his hip. He’s sticky everywhere, from the alcohol or something else he doesn’t know, and the cloying lavender and honeysuckle scents of their omega slick are almost offensively bracing. His head feels like he took Thor’s hammer to the helmet.

Quietly, he disentangles himself from the pile of limbs in the centre of the bed, letting Lacey and Michelle find each other in their half-awake flailing and curl up in a sweet little ball in the middle of the bed. Tony appreciates the view for a moment before turning around and hopping into the shower. There’s absolutely no way he can go home smelling like this.

When he comes out, the ladies are still asleep. Tony blesses his luck and hunts around the room for his clothes, then steps out onto the balcony and calls Happy while he’s still looping his tie around his neck.

“Happy Hogan.”

“Hey, can you pick me up?”

“Tony?” Thankfully, Happy already sounds like he’s in a car. “Where are you?”

Tony winces. “The Mandarin Oriental.”

“You don’t even like their suites,” Happy says, and Tony sighs.

“Yeah, well, pickings are slim right now, y’know, with half of Manhattan in shambles-”

“Please tell me you’re alone.”

Tony doesn’t say anything. It’s answer enough.

“You…Tony, you have a soulmate! You Sight Bonded to _Captain America_. Are you crazy?”

“Look, just come get me,” Tony bites out, and Happy sighs.

“You know, I’m Head of Security now. I’m not your driver anymore. What happened to Evan?”

“Who’s Evan?”

“The guy I assigned-” Happy huffs a laugh. “Okay. I’m coming, just stay there.”

Tony rubs at his brow. “And bring me some aspirin?”

“’Course.”

Tony smiles.

He calls down to the concierge and makes sure that everything will be taken care of whenever the girls decide to check out. Then he asks if he can use the loading dock to avoid scrutiny, and thanks the woman when she tells him she can do him one better: she can have a porter escort him to the laundry elevator and take him through the basement to the loading dock.

“You’re a peach, Taesha.”

“It is absolutely my pleasure, Mr. Stark,” Taesha tells him. Her voice shifts a little, out of professional courtesy and into a confessional, earnest tone. “Thank you. If it’s alright to say that. My sister worked in midtown, and she…” Taesha takes a shaky breath, and Tony breathes in with her.

“Taesha?” Tony asks, swallowing.

“She’s okay,” Taesha manages, and Tony smiles. He laughs a little, relieved and giddy with it. “Just a radial fracture, if you can believe it. So I just wanted to say thank you, for saving her. For saving us all. A little privacy is truly the least I could do.”

By the time Tony’s bundled into the car with Happy—after, of course, leaving a hefty tip for both Taesha and the overly-polite porter who’d taken him downstairs—he’s about ready to take a horse pill. His head feels like it’s going to burst.

Happy offers him a selection of Advil Liqui-Gels, Motrin, and Aspirin as soon as he climbs into the car. Tony swallows two Liqui-Gels dry and collapses back into the seat, letting his head loll against the plush leather.

“So,” Happy says, “wanna talk about it?”

“I’m Sight Bonded to a soulmate who hates me, and he’s got a stick up his ass a mile long. I just needed a break.”

“Who’d you spend the night with?”

“What, you want a blow-by-blow?”

“Just wondering if SI PR needs to brace for impact,” Happy says easily.

A breathless gust of laughter breaks free of Tony’s chest. He wipes a tired hand over his face. “Fuck. Sorry, Happy.”

Happy shrugs.

“Lacey is a…well, she’s a repeat,” Tony tells him. “I met her before Afghanistan. We’ve messed around a few times, all fun, and she’s never said a thing to anyone. She vouched for her friend. We’re clear.”

“A repeat, huh?” Happy asks, and Tony tips his head back and closes his eyes. He remembers Lacey’s perfect French manicure gently resting against the arc reactor, soft brown eyes gleaming up at him from beneath thick eyelashes.

“Does it hurt?” she’d asked him, the first time she saw it.

“No,” Tony’d lied, and she’d smiled at him like she knew and pressed a kiss to the centre. The print of her lipstick on the crystal pane of glass was still there in the morning, and he’d stared at it for longer than necessary. Eventually, he’d wiped it off with a hotel towel and stepped into the shower.

“Just fun,” Tony repeats, and Happy hmms noncommittally. “Cap and I aren’t fully bonded, yet, anyway.” He tilts his neck to the side to show his unmarked boding gland. “No bite.”

“I don’t think anyone else would see it that way,” Happy says. “Especially not the Captain.”

“Well, if he cared he should have Claimed me, then,” Tony mutters.

Happy has nothing to say to that.

Tony manages to get back to his room, shower again, and change in time for lunch. He looks at himself in the mirror—sagging skin below his eyes, crow’s feet, laugh lines—and wonders what the fuck about him is supposed to be compatible with the peak of human perfection.

It’s a dark path for his mind to wander, and so he tears himself away and heads towards the communal kitchen. Bruce and Steve are both there, heads bent over the Times, and Tony experiences the strangest feeling. His stomach flips over, tightens. He feels nauseated.

 _Guilt_ , he thinks. _What are the odds?_

“Morning,” he says, stepping into the kitchen. He pours himself a cup of coffee, ignores the sensation of eyes on the back of his neck. Bruce made lunch, it looks like—some kind of curry.

“Can I kill this?”

“Of course.”

Tony serves himself a plate and turns back to the table. He takes a seat at Bruce’s right.

Steve’s chair scrapes against the tile, and Tony glances across the table to see that he’s stood up. His blue eyes are wide. He’s looking at Tony like he’s never seen him before.

“What?” Tony asks.

“I-…” Steve sucks in a breath, then his face twists. His scent is all over the place: despair, longing, confusion-

“Excuse me,” Steve stammers, and speed walks out of the kitchen. Tony blinks after him, too shocked to be properly offended.

“What the hell?” Tony asks.

Bruce makes a soft, muffled sound. It bears a suspicious resemblance to a laugh, and Tony turns and spears him with a dirty look.

“ _What_.”

“You’re not wearing your blockers,” Bruce tells him, and Tony freezes. He goes back over the morning, and realises that Bruce is right. He didn’t apply anything to his bonding or scenting glands when he came home. He was too hungover to remember.

“Oh,” Tony says. He glances over towards where Steve had just been sitting. A hollow pit opens in his stomach, and from it, something rouses and crawls to the surface: something poisonous, and sour, with rows and rows of spiny teeth. “I guess I can see how that could be…overwhelming. First time properly smelling me or whatever.”

“Overwhelmed,” Bruce repeats, chuckling. “Okay, Tony.”

Tony doesn’t know what he means by that, and he still feels like his head is full of cotton. If Cap wants to be an asshole he can go and suck his own knot for all Tony cares. He shovels food into his mouth and glances over at the crossword.

“It’s Mehitabel,” he says, and Bruce swats at him.

“Let me do it,” he grouses, and Tony laughs. He leans over and ruffles Bruce’s hair. Slowly, they settle, until Tony’s leaning half into Bruce’s side. Bruce is warm, and softer than he looks. He smells like fresh homemade caramel.

“Wish we could’ve Sight Bonded,” Tony murmurs sleepily. He presses his face into Bruce’s shoulder. “Smell nice.”

Bruce sighs, but it’s a soft kind of sigh. He reaches up and cards his fingers through Tony’s hair.

“You know we couldn’t have.”

Tony smiles, face still pressed into Bruce’s bicep. He takes a long drag of his scent, breathes out slow. “What do I do if not make history, Brucey Bear?”

Bruce chuckles. “Sight Bonding Steve isn’t history-making enough for you?”

Tony grumbles and closes his eyes, opting not to answer. Bruce is warm, and his laughter is a soft, pleasant rumble against Tony’s sternum. He’s so lovely. Tony aches for all the things he wants and cannot have, the things he has and does not want.

Eventually, warm and exhausted, he slips into sleep.

Tony wakes up on the sofa with a crick in his neck, disoriented and flailing for his buzzing phone. He’s covered in a blanket that smells faintly of Steve, but he’s too sleepy to be annoyed at the presumption. Instead he tugs it closer around himself and pulls his phone out from his pocket. The screen is aggressively blue in the warm afternoon light.

_Thnx for a good time bb. xx LMK if you got home ok? No paps?_

Tony swallows, glancing around furtively. There’s no one else in the room. It doesn’t even matter. He and Steve aren’t even together.

 _Home safe, no vultures_ , he tells Lacey. He sits up and stretches, scratching at his belly.

“Time to do some work,” he decides.

Steve’s already in the workshop when he gets there. He’s sitting on the sofa, sketching presumably, but he stiffens when Tony walks in. His eyes flicker up to Tony’s face before they dip back down to the page in front of him.

_He’s wearing blockers._

Tony hesitates to assume it’s bigotry or pointed cruelty, although whether or not that’s just wishful thinking remains to be seen. There’s something about Steve’s strung-tight demeanour that grates hard on Tony’s nerves. Tony shifts his weight, awkward, then steels himself. This is his workshop, damnit. He’s not going to let Steve’s…whatever the hell this is get to him. He marches into the room and settles down at the worktop, pulling up the x-rays from Grand Central.

“What’ve you got for me, baby?” he asks JARVIS.

JARVIS helpfully zeroes in on a few problem areas. Then Steve shifts on the sofa, making the leather creak. Tony restrains the urge to toss him out.

“Blast something, would ya?”

“Spoonman” spills forth from the speakers, albeit a quieter volume than what Tony really means when he says “blast.” Still, it’s better than silence, and for a while he works on the projection. He runs through simulated tests and watches the tunnel collapse five, thirteen, forty seven different ways. He considers fringe theories on new biosynthetic building materials that mimic mushrooms or spider webs. He dictates a few light inquiries to a handful of material science innovators across the world.

Eventually, he forgets all about Steve. He’s six hours into an engineering binge, having discarded the idea of perfecting nanites in a timely manner but instead considering if perhaps he could reach out to the mutant community, when something pulls him out of his fugue. He closes his eyes and breathes in deep.

There, at the very end of the worktop, is a bowl of steaming stew. Steve is nowhere to be found, and Tony wheels over to the bowl. There’s a piece of paper pinned under it, and he tugs it out, tilting it into the light.

It’s a little ink caricature of Tony. He’s standing in the middle of the workshop surrounded by his bots and holoscreens, brows furrowed, and there’s a little censored speech bubble emanating from his mouth. DUM-E is drooping in shame, and Tony can’t help but chuckle just a little at the image.

‘Hard at Work 6/28/12’ is written at the bottom centre of the drawing. Steve’s initials are tucked into the corner.

“Dork,” Tony mutters. He holds it carefully between his fingers and takes it to the pegboard on the wall, then pauses, the pin about to puncture the paper. “J, how fast can we frame this?”

“I can have it done by tomorrow, sir.”

“Cool.” He leaves it on the little table under the board. “I don’t have enough tchotchkes. I should have more tchotchkes, right?”

The only things of personal import on his desk are the old arc reactor Pepper had engraved for him and a photo of him and Rhodey from their graduation at MIT. The rest of it is just blueprints and crap.

He drums his fingers on the worktop, staring sightlessly down at the drawing. Steve’s trying his best. Tony knows he is. It’s not Steve’s fault he can’t stand Tony. Tony’s hard to get along with. He’s a lot. He’s always known this. He’d just…hoped Steve would be different. But it didn’t matter. He’s always known the soulmates thing was bullshit. Now he has proof: no matter how compatible their pheromones are, they just can;t get along. And that's fine. That was normal, even. People do that all the time. Hell, his parents had done that. Maria and Howard had absolutely nothing in common. They’d married for status, and money, and the promise of healthy children. So what if Tony doesn’t want any of those things? Steve’s polite. He’s stunningly handsome. The sex will probably be…perfunctory, and missionary, but Tony can probably deal. Steve’s not hard to look at. It’ll be fine. Fairness is for kindergarten and fairy tales. Tony's a big boy. He can step up.

He walks over and picks up the soup, takes a taste. It’s warm and hearty, even if the prevailing flavours are mostly salt and pepper.

“Steve made this?” he asks.

“Yes, sir.”

Boring, but good. That seems on brand.

Tony sighs.

“Close ‘er down, J.”

“Headed to bed so early?”

“Nah,” Tony says. “Time to face the music.”

He finds Steve out on the balcony.

The shattered glass is gone, now, but it’s not exactly pretty. The tiles are pitted with marks left by falling debris, and the guard rail is missing in one section. Steve’s apparently taken that as an invitation, because he’s sitting cross-legged right in front of the part without any protection from the drop to the pavement. He’s got a little set of paints out, and he’s doing the skyline in rich, deep purples and oranges. He looks calm. Meditative.

Tony settles into one of the two remaining chairs out on the deck with two fingers of Glenmorangie and watches him work. It’s a strange reversal of their usual roles. Steve’s aware of him, Tony’s sure. He always seems to be hyperaware of Tony, no matter where he is or what he’s doing. But he seems content enough to keep painting, and so Tony leans back and slips his eyes closed. He lets the warm summer breeze wash over him and listens to the sounds of New York, alive and still ticking along.

 _I did that_ , he thinks. It’s not so hard, today, to think about it. It almost feels good.

Eventually, he can hear the sounds of Steve packing up. He cracks one eye to find Steve looking at him, an expression of unbearable vulnerability on his face. It’s the first time he’s actually looked as young as he is, and Tony’s heart trips in his chest. For a long moment, they just stare at each other, solemn and helpless. Then Steve clears his throat, and looks away.

“Sorry,” he says. A touch of pink spills over his pale cheeks, and an answering delight bubbles up inside Tony at the sight of it. He’s unfairly adorable. “I…I’ll get used to it. I promise.”

“Get used to what?” Tony prompts, even though he knows the answer.

“Your scent,” Steve says miserably. “I just wasn’t prepared. But if you don’t want to wear your blockers, that’s- I mean, please do whatever you want. I just. I don’t want you to do it because of me. That’s all I’m trying to say. I want you to do whatever you want with your body. I…I get it, now, so if this was to prove a point-”

“Hush,” Tony tells him, even as his stomach twists painfully, and Steve stops. He’s stiff as a board. “I just forgot to apply it this morning. Don’t get all twisted up about it.”

“Okay,” Steve says, but the tension in him doesn’t ease. Tony huffs a sigh.

“I know…it’s.” He sucks in a slow breath. “I know I’m not…normal. Maybe it was…shitty, not to tell you-”

“No,” Steve says frantically. He holds up his hands, his head shaking back and forth. His eyes are wide and earnest. “No, no, you’ve- you’ve got it all wrong-”

Tony narrows his eyes at Steve, and Steve immediately closes his mouth. His expression is pleading, even as he folds his hands into his lap. He clenches his hands together so tight his knuckles pale. A strange suspicion niggles at Tony.

“You like it?” he asks.

Steve flushes even redder if possible. He swallows. “That feels like a…dangerous question to answer,” he says baldly, and Tony laughs. It startles him, the earnestness of it, but Steve’s so awkward. It’s hard to begrudge him for his minor trespasses when he’s so clearly struggling.

“Come here,” Tony tells him, and Steve rises, moving closer. His skin nearly glows in the twilight. He’s so pale. A statue of an ancient hero, risen again.

Tony holds out a wrist to him, face up, in a gesture as old as humankind. “If you like,” he says, a little coy now.

Steve’s mouth drops open. His eyes flicker to Tony’s wrist, then back up to his face. He steps a little closer. “You mean…”

Tony stretches his wrist a little closer to Steve. “If you like,” he repeats, and Steve _blushes_. Full on, bright magenta, all the way up to his ears. “Wow.”

Steve ignores him. He goes to his knees in front of Tony on the broken tile, paying no mind to the sharp edges, and reaches out with trembling hands for Tony’s wrist. His eyes dart up, meeting Tony’s for a brief, breathless second, before he looks back down at Tony’s skin. Bluegreen veins stand out against his olive skin. They will only get more visible with age, Tony knows.

Steve leans in, his nose ghosting over Tony’s wrist. He’s barely even touching him, just the faintest pressure of his fingertips. Like he wants this to be as sterile as possible. He takes a deep breath, shudders all the way from head to toe. A soft, punched out sound escapes his mouth.

“Tony,” he burrs, and the deep timbre of his voice injects warmth straight into Tony’s spine, sure as a drug. “God.”

“Go ahead,” Tony encourages him, and Steve takes Tony’s wrist in his hands and gently, ever so sweetly, rubs his cheek against the scenting gland there. He’s shaking, still, the tension in his muscles vibrating like a plucked string. His expression could best be described as tortured.

Tony can relate. As good as it feels to mark Steve, his chest feels like it’s going to break open. There’s no coming back from this, not really. There’s no exit strategy, no parachute. Just the long fall into Steve, until Tony can’t fight him anymore. Until he’s subsumed. Overcome.

When Steve presses Tony’s wrist to his bonding gland, he keeps his eyes squeezed shut. Tony’s thankful for it, in a way. He doesn’t know what he would do if he had to look at Steve while it was happening. This is already more intimate than anything he’s ever done with anyone. He feels like his heart is going to crawl out of his chest.

Tony brings his other wrist up and does the other side of Steve’s neck, then up, behind his ears. Steve reaches up and holds his hands there, fingers light as a bird on Tony’s forearms. Just the faintest hint of pressure telling him to stay.

Steve takes a deep, shuddering breath. Then another. Another. Until, finally, the shaking in his muscles subsides. His brow straightens out for what’s maybe the first time since he met Tony. Tony can feel Steve’s pulse against his wrists as it slows, strong as drum.

“Thank you,” Steve grates out. He opens his eyes, bright with moisture. A small, fragile smile curves his mouth into something Tony might actually like to kiss someday. “That was…” He swallows. “That was nice.”

Tony hazards a smile at him, and for a moment they just look at each other. Steve’s eyes tracing his face are almost as tangible as hands. Everywhere he looks, Tony feels it.

“When I was young,” Steve says, “I thought I’d die before I Bonded.”

Tony swallows. “And now?”

Steve quirks a smile. He pulls away from Tony’s embrace. “You’re something else. I never could’ve imagined I’d have a soulmate, let alone one like you,” he chuckles, and it hits Tony sure as a blade to the chest. It cracks him open. A lump forms in his throat.

“Right,” he says, and Steve frowns. That ever-present crease in his brow reforms as he moves closer, then away, hovering awkwardly. He holds his hands up like he’s trying to calm a feral animal.

“What?” he asks. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” Tony says. He swallows down the urge to cry, sucks in a shaky breath. “That’s all just me, sorry.”

“Tony,” Steve says helplessly. His eyes search Tony’s face, but still he can’t manage to meet Tony’s gaze. His eyes skitter away every time.

Tony waits for Steve to get his thoughts together. He waits for Steve to return the favour. To take his wrists and smear them over Tony’s bonding gland, his temple. To mark Tony as his own.

But Steve doesn’t do any of that.

The moment stretches out, slow and horrible, taffy-thick. It’s worse than anything Tony could have possibly imagined. Steve’s expression closes off the longer the silence drags on, until all of the tension that had bled out of him during the scenting is right back where it started. He’s stiff as a board as he retreats to pick up his paints and brushes, his little cup of solvent, his rag.

“Sorry,” Steve says, looking at a spot vaguely over Tony’s shoulder.

Tony doesn’t answer. He’s too busy trying to keep himself from breaking down into tears like a stupid fucking kid.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, again. His voice sounds like he’s been chewing on broken glass. He ducks back into the tower without another word.

Tony doesn’t know how long he sits numbly, abandoned and alone, on an ash-stained lounge chair on his broken balcony. He manages not to fall apart, but instead it seems that the only other alternative is numbness. He doesn’t know where to go from here. He couldn’t have imagined this outcome: that he would open up to Steve, and Steve would reject him so thoroughly. He’d thought Steve would have at least been polite about it.

Eventually, he’s able to scrape together enough strength to swing his legs over the side of the lounge chair. He scrubs his hands over his face, wipes away whatever wetness lingers at the corners of his puffy eyes. He takes a deep, trembling breath.

“Well,” he says, “better to know, I guess.”

He takes one last look at the city. Millions of people, all alive and Bonded and breathing. People he’d sacrificed his life for. It wasn’t enough, apparently, but he’d do it again.

Tony has never been enough to please anybody. Pepper. His parents. His exes. Obie. It shouldn’t be surprising that even with the rarest of bonds within his grasp, and a Bond Mate inextricably chained to him, he’s still not enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This one hurt a lot. Hopefully y'all like it.
> 
> As always for this series, the quote is from Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
> 
> Not sure what's coming next for these, but I'm enjoying working on them! Happy hols (past or future). May your days be as merry and bright as possible considering this ridiculous year we've had. <3


End file.
